In 1678, a news pamphlet titled “The Mowing Devil: Or, Strange News Out of Hertfordshire,” described a crop circle in Hertfordshire, England. The report was republished by Hertfordshire folklorist W.B. Gerish in 1913, and it reads:

“Being a true relation of a farmer, who bargaining with a poor mower about the cutting down three half acres of oats: Upon the mower’s asking too much, the farmer swore that the devil should mow it rather than he. And so it fell out, that very night, the crop of oat shew’d as if it had been all of a flame; but the next morning appear’d so neatly mow’d by the devil or some infernal spirit, that no mortal man was able to do the like.”